Analysis | Absence of Xi heir among new China leaders raises questions

China’s Communist Party leader Xi Jinping unveiled the new lineup of six men who will assist him as he embarks on a second five-year term centered on protecting and projecting the party’s interests at home and abroad. Among them was a notable absence: an obvious successor to Xi, raising questions over how long he intends to rule.

As expected, Xi was given a renewed mandate following the first meeting of the new Central Committee that was elected at the party’s twice-a-decade national congress.

“We will mobilize the whole party and the whole country in a resolute push to deliver on our pledge and eradicate poverty in China,” Xi, China’s president, said in comments to reporters at a brief ceremony at the Great Hall of the People.

The new leaders will face challenges that include reining burgeoning levels of debt, managing trade tensions with the U.S. and Europe, preventing war over North Korea’s nuclear program and navigating ties with Southeast Asian nations wary of Beijing’s influence.

Five members of the new seven-strong Politburo Standing Committee Xi introduced were newly appointed yesterday. Going by the party’s norms on retirement ages, none of them are deemed suitable to succeed the 64-year-old Xi as party leader after his second five-year term.

The absence of an obvious successor pointed to Xi’s longer-term ambitions, said Joseph Fewsmith, an expert on Chinese politics at Boston University.

“It suggests that Xi will likely serve a third term, and that he is likely to name his own successor,” Fewsmith said. “We have not seen that for two decades.”

In contrast, before Xi took power in 2012, he had been in the Standing Committee for five years and Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao had a seat on the body for 10 years before becoming party leader. Under recent party precedent, party leaders have served just two five-year terms.

The party had already elevated Xi’s status on Tuesday at its closing session by inserting his name and dogma into the party’s constitution alongside past leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, cementing his status as the most powerful man to head the country in decades.

“No one doubts Xi bestrides the landscape like a colossus. Organized or even unorganized resistance is inconceivable,” said Jeremy Paltiel, a China expert at Canada’s Carleton University.

Xi, the son of a Communist elder, has described his political ideology as central to setting China on the path to becoming a “great modern socialist country” by midcentury. This vision has at its core a ruling party that serves as the vanguard for everything from defending national security to providing moral guidance to ordinary Chinese.

The only other returning member to the apex ruling body was Premier Li Keqiang, the party’s second-
ranking official primarily responsible for overseeing the economy and leading the Cabinet. Li’s authority was widely viewed as having been undercut by Xi’s accumulation of power across various sectors of government.

The makeup of the committee reflects Xi’s efforts to foster party unity by striking a balance between different interest groups in the 89-million member organization. They will run the rubber-stamp legislature and its advisory body and be responsible for areas that include propaganda, party discipline and ethnic and Taiwan affairs.

The inclusion of politicians from factions associated with Xi’s predecessors Hu and Jiang Zemin in the Politburo Standing Committee pointed to the party’s efforts to assuage concerns that Xi has been centralizing too much authority under him alone, analysts said.

“It signals balance and offers some relief to those who thought Xi will seek to place just his own loyal followers in key positions,” said Dali Yang, a China politics expert at the University of Chicago.

Among the five new members, only Zhao and Li Zhanshu are seen to be Xi’s proteges. Gillian Wong & Christopher Bodeen, AP